POCiT provides easy bill payment system

derrick5 October 2011

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POCiT, a pioneering South African mobile payment company, South Africans’ lives have been made easier as they can now pay their bills immediately on their cellphones. A leader in its field POCiT has partnered with Munsoft, a service provider of Financial & Billing Systems to Local Government. This System controls all aspects of Municipalities’ Income and Expenditure, including the distribution of over a million statements every month. Munsoft serves 35 municipalities equally spread between Limpopo, KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga.

With the wide reach of mobile phones in South Africa, Munsoft has moved to sending out monthly statements via cellphone and the partnership with POCiT closes the payment loop by providing customers with the option to pay their municipal bill immediately via their cellphones.

“A key advantage of mobile bill presentment and payment is that it reduces admin and helps ensure that people don’t default simply because they either don’t know how much to pay or lack the ability to pay immediately from where they are,” says POCiT MD David Reynders.

He says for municipalities POCiT’s partnership with Munsoft is ideal. According to reports, South African municipalities are owed about R70-billion in unpaid bills due to inefficient billing and collection mechanisms and ratepayers paying late. POCiT and Munsoft alleviate the problem by enabling ratepayers to view their municipal bills on their cellphones but pay them immediately from their bank account. With POCiT it does not matter which bank, cellphone network or model of phone a person has. Anyone can make a payment using POCiT. This means municipalities can offer this convenient payment option to all their ratepayers and in turn, enjoy the benefit of increased speed of collections.

“A key benefit to municipalities is the reduced operational costs,” says Peter Balt, Munsoft CEO. He says that doing away with paper statements, sending bills to ratepayers on their cellphones and closing the mobile payment loop with POCiT, will go a long away in increasing collections and decreasing the cost of revenue collection. “Any little step in this direction will benefit everyone in South Africa,” he adds.